


For All This Time

by halotolerant



Category: Rejseholdet | Unit One
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Canon Het Relationships Mentioned, First Kiss, Getting Together, M/M, Partners to Lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-23
Updated: 2016-12-23
Packaged: 2018-09-11 11:59:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8978824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halotolerant/pseuds/halotolerant
Summary: 1996-2005. Repression, true love, crime, coffee and football.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Dorinda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dorinda/gifts).



> **Additional Warnings** : Canon-typical violence (passing mention only) and canon-typical attitudes including homophobia and sexism. Canon-typical infidelity (not in terms of the main pairing however).

**1996.**

"So, you guess it right or what?" Allan Fischer chucked his coat over the back of his chair and grinned. He hadn't really planned to get to the office so early, but this was the perfect chance to finally make some headway with the member of the mobile team he'd found most difficult in the couple of days on the job thus far. Allan might be the new kid on the block, but he knew he was damn charming and he knew he was going places. And that meant making connections. 

 

From across the office conference table, La Cour slowly raised his eyes from the open folder in front of him, and blinked slowly. His long, soft-looking hair had flopped down over his eyes, and he brushed it aside. "What are you talking about?"

 

 _Even making connections with literally the weirdest cop in the whole of Denmark_ , Allan told himself, and bit back the first several retorts that came into his head. 

 

"The Euro finals? At the weekend? You pick the right team? I really thought the Czechs might do it. Not that any of it mattered after what happened to us." Allan sighed heavily.

 

This would have effectively opened a conversation of fellowship, he was sure, with literally any other Dane on the planet.

 

La Cour frowned, narrowing his eyes. "I don't watch football."

 

Allan coughed, getting his own files out of his bag, chucking an old coke can to the nearby bin harder than he needed to. "What did you do at the weekend, then?"

 

A shrug. "I walked by the river?"

 

There was something in his tone that was nearly infuriating – for a moment Allan wanted nothing so much as to try and smack him. But then, in the tilt of his head, something uncertain, something almost nervous came into La Cour’s face, like he could tell he wasn’t getting the script right. And now Allan was unsure enough that he hesitated, and annoyed enough that he let out a more natural reply than the emollient response he’d planned:

 

"Did you even _know_ the biggest game in Europe was happening?"

 

"Of course. Domestic violence always soars in the wake of major sporting finals. It’s as well to be ready."

 

Allan stared. Even if he wasn't keeping a rein on his tongue, he wasn't sure he had anything left to say. 

 

Chief Torben, of course, when he turned up, had plenty to say about the game, and five new filthy and un-PC jokes about it as well. I.P. too, for once, had sat through the whole thing, the typical Euro-and-Worlds-only man. Allan was aware of the satisfaction of laughing with them both over coffee, recreating golden goals with sachets of freeze-dried granules and stick stirrers and sugar-lumps. They were easy men to network with for sure - in fact, with Torben in charge, Allan could see himself hitting that FBI course in a matter of years. 

 

La Cour, though, coming over to fill his own cup, that folder still in his long pale hands, off in his own world as he read and re-read it, was distracting. Frustrating, almost. Why wouldn't he be part of the group? Why didn't he care? 

 

"I'm going to take you to a football game this Saturday," Allan found himself saying, having angled around the edges of where La Cour was sitting for a couple of minutes, waiting to be noticed. 

 

Again, the slowly raised head, the blinking eyes. "This Saturday?"

 

"Yes. I'm playing in goal for the Police National Squad down near the coast. There'll be beer."

 

"We haven't solved this case yet."

 

Allan rolled his eyes. "Like we won't have done that by Saturday?"

 

Another long stare. La Cour looked, Allan thought, faintly amused. It wasn't entirely pleasant. 

 

Then, "It wasn't the father," La Cour said, and indicated with his head the photo of the main suspect, recently arrested, as pinned on the main noticeboard at one end of the office. 

 

Allan took a long breath. The father hadn’t behaved the way Allan had expected him to, that much was true, but they had forensics, good forensics on him, and wasn’t that La Cour’s own area?

 

"What makes you say that?"

 

La Cour cleared his throat, finally looking away. "Nothing I can put my finger on. But at the crime scene... I really don't think it was him. We should be looking for a woman. A… a very unhappy woman, who didn't mean to hurt anyone."

 

"Do you think this woman knew the family, though?" 

 

More blinking, with real confusion this time. "Yes, but..."

 

"But what? If she knew them, then I'll ask him. And I'll get an answer." Allan squared his shoulders. "Any more on this woman? Age? Looks?"

 

Was he imagining the slight blush on La Cour's face? "I don't... Like I said, I can't point to a piece of evidence or anything, but..."

 

"If we solve this before Saturday, you'll come to the football?"

 

La Cour gave a rather helpless sounding sigh. "Sure."

 

They solved the case by the end of Thursday, with the until-recently-estranged sister of the father of the victims tracked to her address in Nyborg. 

 

Whenever Allan could cast a glance over - he was kept busy in goal, the Police team were not, alas, at their best - La Cour was staring at the football game like it was another case file, like it too might yield the secrets of the universe, and looking twice as confused. Allan had driven them both out in his car, they'd argued about if it was true the Olympics brought prosperity to the cities hosting it, the benefits of single sex schooling and whether it was necessary to read Proust. Conversationally, it was the equivalent of running a training assault course when you had no idea what obstacle was coming next, but La Cour had barely lapsed into his usual silence the whole time and now there he was, paying upright and rapt attention. 

 

The plan had been to get all of the team on Allan’s side as swiftly as possible, and this was the plan working.

 

Allan felt the brisk cold air and the sunshine, and grinned.

 

- 

 

**1997.**

 

“Anyone else for anything else?” Allan asked, looking around the table.

 

I.P. held up his glass with a nod, Gaby covered over her still mostly full one with her hand, shaking her head. La Cour drained his beer, and then shifted a little in his seat in the booth.

 

“I’ll help you, Fischer,” said Torben, who was closer, and got up.

 

They went together to the bar.

 

Waiting, Torben lit up, and offered one to Allan, who smiled and accepted happily.

 

FBI course selection time was coming up, and though Allan knew that even if Torben pushed him for it this year Ulf was unlikely to take him seriously, just to be on record, on the good boys list, wouldn’t hurt one bit.

 

And a man could always dream.

 

"I reckon he's queer, myself," Torben said in a confidential tone.

 

Allan frowned, derailed from his train of thought. He took a quick drag, tapped off the ash into a saucer on the bar to give himself time to think.

 

“What? Who?”

 

He wouldn’t look back at the table to see if anyone else had got up. That would be the one thing guaranteed to bring them over. Allan wasn’t a great policeman for no reason.

 

"Well that or he doesn't fuck anyone," Torben conceded, and burped, loudly.

 

Allan wondered if Torben had been drinking, somehow, before they arrived at the bar.

 

"Talented, though,” Torben continued. “Damn talented. Dunno how he does that thing he does, but..." he waved the cigarette in front of him, as if in illustration, then held up his hands and shrugged. "Well, you've seen it yourself."

 

Allan nodded. "Uh huh." He looked at the barman pulling the beer – how could it possibly take this long?

 

"I don't get how they do it, queers," Torben was saying now, meditatively. Allan put his cigarette in his mouth, chewed the end. Perhaps someone would page him. Or he could fake some sort of choking fit…

 

“I mean, come on, why would a guy ever..?”

 

Allan shrugged expressively, laughed aloud like it had all been the best punch line ever. A good guess – Torben was pissed enough that he got set off laughing as well at once, easily, and hard enough not to be able to talk through it.

 

It wasn’t like Allan gave a fuck for labels, and he certainly didn’t want to wave any flags, but he didn’t like lying, even by omission. Men were easy to pick up – easier than women, sometimes, and sometimes more what he felt in the mood for – and Allan was never going to be idiot enough to try and move a guy in, or take one to a work function or back to his parents, but it was a free world, nearly the twenty-first century, and it was hard to be as matey with Torben as Allan wanted and needed to be if Torben was going to talk like this.

 

Maybe Allan’s behaviour would have to be the thing that changed, though, if that was what his career plans took. No great loss, really, a one-night stand was a one-night stand after all.

 

Shifting his posture, stretching a little, Allan let himself check out their table in the corner of his eye. The three others were all still sitting there, waiting, well out of earshot.

 

No one on the team talked about how La Cour did _any_ of the things he might or might not do. Allan had learned that very quickly. I.P. was a taciturn man who always left well enough alone where possible, Torben only got like this when he was drunk, and usually wanted to talk about women rather than the job, and Torben routinely kept Gaby somewhat on the periphery of them all, with varying degrees of overt sexism. She was a smart girl, Allan had often thought, and it really wasn’t fair.

 

In any case, no reports ever went forward from any of them to the central office admitting that a lead in a successfully solved case had come from nowhere more specific than La Cour’s intuition.

 

And evenings like this – all of them out together - were more the exception than the rule. Allan didn’t know a great deal about anyone’s personal life, but certainly no one was spilling the beans on La Cour and despite it being almost a year since Allan had joined, despite inviting La Cour to every social event he could reasonably think of, he’d still not managed to sneak a reciprocal glimpse of where La Cour lived to find out more that way.

 

It was a mystery, and Allan liked mysteries. That was kind of the point.

 

He’d wondered, sometimes, if La Cour could read people – read Allan himself – the way he read crime scenes. Whether La Cour could look into his eyes and see…

 

But someone who could do that wouldn’t be so awkward with people, would he? Wouldn’t find it so hard to say the right thing, be the right kind of person to get along in life?

 

Allan shook his head to clear it, took one more drag before stubbing out his cigarette, and nudged Torben – who was still chuckling – on the arm. “Hey, you gonna help or what?” He reached out to pick up two of the drinks himself.

 

As they made their way back across to the others, Allan found himself studying La Cour’s face. Allan was a fine detective in his own right, after all - he ought to be the one who could figure things out.

 

La Cour gave him a quick, slightly awkward grin, raising an eyebrow. Allan coughed, and reached into his pocket.

 

“Not at the table, please?” La Cour asked him, when they were once more sat next to each other.

 

Torben was watching them, Allan could tell. He cracked a joke, and got out his lighter.

 

-

 

**1998.**

 

“Aren’t you even a bit excited?”

 

“That _your_ girlfriend is having a baby? I can’t say desperately so, no.”

 

Allan laughed, and gave a friendly kick to La Cour’s desk chair. “No, dummy! The World Cup starts next week!” He held out his hands, waving them around between them. “Hello? I don’t care that you don’t like football, this is national news! First time qualified since 1986! We’re going to make up for ’96 now, you’ll see, this is the chance, the time!” He clowned around, making an exaggerated gesture of gripping the air.

 

La Cour regarded him for a moment. “How is Mille?”

 

He had paused – Allan had interrupted him, truth be told – in the middle of packing up his briefcase. They had finished up in the temporary offices in Århus, another violent criminal had been locked up, no little thanks to Allan personally chasing him down, and Allan was about ready to let loose. He had been hoping La Cour might be amenable to a celebratory beer.

 

Now La Cour was looking at him rather oddly, but then with La Cour that probably just meant it was a Thursday.

 

“Eh, she’s fine.” Allan shrugged. “Listen, the tournament’s in France, yes? So I was thinking, we’ve just finished, you can get these cheap flights now, on the internet, for just no money at all – we could go. We could go to Paris, one night, two – maybe more. Denmark is going to stay in the game a long while this time, I’m sure, I might even put a bet on it. Hey, do you think so? Can you tell me how they’ll do?”

 

La Cour cleared his throat. “Must be daunting, knowing that you're becoming a father.”

 

Allan had announced his news about two weeks earlier. He’d thought it was a bit odd La Cour hadn’t had more to say about it at the time – the rest of the team had done the usual sort of back-slapping and drink-buying and enquiries, Torben beaming and cracking out huge cigars – but La Cour had been rather quiet. On the other hand they’d still been in the middle of a case then, and often that meant La Cour wasn’t quite himself.

 

Sighing, Allan sat down. Evidently football chat wasn’t allowed until this was done.

 

“It’s a pretty big deal, I guess,” he conceded. Tipping back his chair, he thought about it. He hadn’t been letting himself do that. Mille was lovely, his parents liked her, it had been a great relationship for a couple months now and even if they hadn’t planned to get this serious this fast – there would be a wedding next, if Allan’s mother had anything to do with it – good marriages had been built on surprise pregnancies for thousands of years, right? And a wife and kids, that played well on a C.V.

 

“Truly?” he looked up, grinning. “It is scary. But I’m excited to be a Dad. We don’t know if it’s a boy or a girl yet, of course, but either way…” A thrill ran down his spine. He could already imagine it, the little tyke running around him on a wide beach, kicking a ball, flying a kite, eating ice cream, learning to skate, getting to rely on him to pick them up if they fell down. _My Dad’s a policeman_ , they could say to their friends. _Don’t you mess with me, he’ll keep me safe._

 

La Cour’s face had gone strangely wistful. “Good for you,” he said, and it didn’t sound sarcastic. “I hope it all goes well, Fischer.” Then, bizarrely, he reached over and shook Allan’s hand, formal and firm, before starting to pack his case again.

 

“So, can we talk about the World Cup now?” Allan rolled the chair over the floor to butt up against La Cour’s elbow. “Paris, yes?” He chuckled, looking at La Cour’s face. “Or how about you come over to ours for it?”

 

“Mille won’t mind?”

 

“Mille loves football.”

 

“I mean, I wouldn’t be intruding?”

 

“How could you be intruding?”

 

La Cour blinked at him, the way he did. “How indeed?”

 

Allan got up again. He wanted a cigarette, but lighting up next to La Cour annoyed him and Allan wanted him in a good mood. They had seen less of each other outside work since Mille had come along, and maybe that was just how getting old and sensible happened, but Allan wasn’t ready for all that to come along just yet.

 

In work, they were in fact together more. Torben had taken to sending them out as a pair – “Watch him for me,” he’d say to both of them, one then the other, in almost the same breath, and then laugh uproariously at his own joke. Joke or not, their case closure record spoke for itself. And Allan wasn’t going to say it, but having La Cour at his side to cool him off sometimes had helped him out more than once. At the same time, frankly he was probably also keeping La Cour from disappearing forever into a blank haze of long-distance disquiet, so maybe it evened out.

 

La Cour had no interest in the FBI Course, which was annoying, even at the same time as being a relief, for certainly he’d have been a hell of a contender. But sometimes they took two or even three Danish candidates, and if Allan might be going this year – he really did have shot now, he was sure – there was limited time to talk La Cour round to applying.

 

“Come and watch the game with me, yeah?” Allan said again now. “Tell you what, I’ve got it!” He clapped his hands together. “We’ll rent somewhere, a nice beach house, walks all morning, and fresh fish and so on, and football games on the TV and beer and the best vodka at night, yes?”

 

“That won’t be much fun for Mille.”

 

Allan waved his hand. He’d forgotten for a moment that she would probably have to be there too. “She can drink apple juice or something, she’ll be fine. It’s a brilliant plan.”

 

-

 

**1999.**

 

“Not what we expected for ourselves, either of us, is it?”

 

La Cour turned round to look at him. Allan held up the two glasses of whisky he'd just poured and grinned, carefully making his way through the gap in the sliding door and onto the tiny balcony of La Cour’s apartment. The night air was getting colder, the days shorter, now.

 

He’d come here first in the last days of Mille’s pregnancy, when she’d said she needed their apartment to herself to nest in, that his snoring drove her nuts, that if he asked her how she was one more time she’d explode. He’d not expected the invitation, was ready to phone the nearest Travelodge, but La Cour had seemed almost more anxious about the birth than he was, to the point that in another man Allan would have been asking his wife serious questions. As it was, Allan had finally got to see the (not all that wacky, all things considered) home of Thomas La Cour.

  
Now Fischer had Victor, had had the joy of him for three months, and it felt like some part of his life was always going to be OK, forever, as a result, but nonetheless, he found himself still coming over to La Cour’s after work on a regular basis. Better than annoying Mille with drinking and smoking around the baby.

 

Allan handed over one of the glasses. “Ingrid Dahl?” he prompted. “What do you make of her?”

 

“Oh, yes, that.” La Cour stared down into his drink for a moment. “She seems very competent.”

 

Allan sighed.

 

“She knows your record, all our records,” La Cour continued, looking up. “She’ll send you on that bloody course soon enough.”

 

Allan raised his glass. “You know me too well.”

 

“I doubt that.”

 

When Allan looked across, La Cour was staring into the night, at all the city laid out, lighting up underneath their feet, starting to sparkle.

 

“Mille wants us to go to London for New Year’s Eve.” Allan took another sip of whisky, fiery and consoling. “I have no idea why. And I’ll never, ever square that with my mother. How is it coming up for the year two thousand now, anyway? How did that happen? I thought we were all supposed to have hover cars by now, and robot servants and holiday homes on Mars.”

 

“If you’ve invited yourself over just to be morbid…”

 

“You’ve known what was going to happen all your life, I suppose? Never surprised? Never caught aback to find yourself waking up in your own body and yet somehow…” Allan gestured out with the glass, and realised his hands were still wet from washing minutes earlier – it slipped from his grasp, flying out, glinting in the air, falling, crashing to the street below.

 

The empty street below, thank God.

 

Allan turned round from looking over the barrier rail. La Cour was frowning at him. Not the usual frown, the Fischer-how-are-you-still-upright frown, but something more specific.

 

“I’m talking shit,” Allan allowed, holding up a hand. “I’m sorry.”

 

Without comment, La Cour went back inside. A few minutes later, Allan saw him emerging at the foot of the block of flats with a broom and a dustpan, and sweeping up the smashed shards. Chastened, Allan stepped back inside himself. He liked La Cour’s flat – it was messy but clean, and smelt pleasantly of cedar wood – as did La Cour, actually, it seemed to be something in the soap he used - and though the furniture was austere in the extreme, over time most of it had collapsed in various comfortable ways. He’d fallen asleep here before, more than once, and woken covered in a blanket.

 

La Cour had a TV, now. That had been Allan’s present to him the Christmas before, accompanied by a card with a joke about football, about how soon he could even join the police team with Allan if he’d only get the rules straight. Allan dropped round for the important matches regularly - had to keep the continuity of education, he pointed out. Also La Cour listened to at least one piece of his advice and started buying his favourite beer. 

 

“If I’m going to keep having to hear about your sport,” La Cour had said one soon day after that, out of the blue, “you can do the same with mine. Isn't that how it works?”

 

Allan had had no idea that La Cour practiced wrestling at an actual gym, with classes and grades and exams. It was satisfying, and strangely addictive, he swiftly discovered, although unlike La Cour he had trouble making class times regularly enough to keep from getting kicked out. After that, he and La Cour mostly just booked a training space and went through the motions together, grappling, straining, sweating, until they were exhausted and someone called it quits. Then they’d shower and go for lunch, or sometimes a drink. On occasion, when the case had been a harder or darker one than usual, La Cour would simply inform him they were going down there - Allan never had an argument with the plan - and they’d fight it out of their systems until they could barely breathe. La Cour could be almost frightening, at those times, and that wasn't something anyone else ever got to see. 

 

That cut two ways as well. Allan had started crying, once, quite suddenly, in the middle of it all. Something to do with the release of adrenaline, La Cour had assured him, and had carefully patted the middle of his back exactly three times. Sweating, La Cour had still smelt like cedar trees.

 

Now, when La Cour came back up into the flat, depositing the brush and pan just inside the door, Allan was sitting on the sofa in the gathering darkness, sipping from the other whisky glass, which La Cour had foolishly left in reach.

 

“I just meant, earlier,” Allan said slowly, “that sometimes decisions happen and you don’t know whether… I mean that it mightn’t have been… if you could get to go over and do it all again you might…”

 

“Go home to your wife, Allan,” La Cour told him, voice neutral. “That’s what you need.”

 

“She’s barely ever in the mood for it anymore, she’s so tired.” Allan necked the last of the drink.

 

“So help her out more so she gets to sleep now and again! Go home!”

 

“Fine, fine, I’m going. Jeez, you want to protect your whisky just lock it in a safe.” Allan stood up. “Sorry about the glass.”

 

“The glass doesn’t bother me.”

 

Allan blinked at him, then waved his hands and walked away, letting himself out. Maybe, once again, La Cour was kind of right – Allan didn’t need to ask the big questions. He still knew where he was headed.

 

-

 

**2000.**

 

“What have I done? What I was thinking? What the fuck…” Allan bit his lip, took a deep breath. His voice was not going to crack, not now, not ever.

 

He tried again, one hand curling empty, powerless, as he leant against his dashboard. “What the fuck have I done, La Cour?”

 

The voice on the other end of the mobile phone was tinny but assured. “What you had to. You were protecting your family. Nothing came before that in your mind. Nothing ought to.”

 

Allan sighed, and leant back against his the seat of his car, thumping his head none too gently against the rest. This case he’d been sent to in the islands was nonsense, leading nowhere, an insult to his intelligence, meant as a further punishment. As if it even mattered who was painting luminescent penises on the side of barn doors in the back end of beyond.

 

Even if in some distant, hopeful future, he did make that FBI course despite all that had happened, this would be on his file. And would probably look even fucking worse if he didn’t fucking solve it. He tried to kick the dashboard in the confined space, and banged his knee badly, swearing.

 

“I went to see Mille and Victor today,” La Cour was continuing, as though Allan hadn’t made a noise at all. “She’s still a bit shaken up, but I think it’s getting better.”

 

“And Victor?”

 

“He’s fine. Couldn’t care less. That young, I don’t think they know things even happen.”

 

“He might remember, though, like, like…” Allan waved his hand, looking blankly at the grey, bleak shoreline that was the entire view ahead of him, “a repressed memory? Latent? He saw me… well, you know, there was blood everywhere.”

 

“Maybe.” La Cour cleared his throat. “But he seems pretty OK, just for now.”

 

“Well, that’s something at least.” Allan licked his lips, sighed out a huff of breath, coughed, and fumbled for a cigarette in his pocket. “Thank you.”

 

“I went back to the summer house, cleaned up a bit too. There’s a viewing tomorrow. I found some stuff, clothes and things, that I think might be Mille’s.”

 

“What do you mean, might be? You think I take other women there?”

 

“You take other women somewhere.” La Cour still sounded so level and reasonable. If he’d just get properly cross now and again, Allan sometimes wished – fight, really fight with him, not just the stuff from the gym, then they might get somewhere, the somewhere that Allan sometimes felt was just out of sight over a hill.

 

“Alright, Mille’s stuff, then.” La Cour cleared his throat. “I’ll post it to her.”

 

“Hmm, I had better check. Post it to me, and I’ll post it to her. Or whoever.”

 

La Cour laughed, getting the joke, and Allan couldn’t help grinning, even with everything. He had to get out of the car in a minute, interview a spotty thirteen year old, who was probably bored enough to justify most delinquency, about whether he was in possession of pink spray paint.

 

“Never in that house,” Allan said, just to be clear. “I wouldn’t have taken anyone there. It was your place too, after all.” He took another pull of smoke, felt it reach down into his lungs, work into his nerves, stimulating and calming all at the same time. One thing about being alone - no one to tell him not to smoke in his own car. That said, maybe he might have traded the cigarette for La Cour's reassuring quiet smile beside him, even if came with the odd smack round the head. “You still sure that you’re OK with selling up?”

 

“Well I can’t imagine Mille ever wants to go on holiday there again. Surely you don’t?”

 

Allan took a sip of coffee from his flask. It was the cheap stuff, and going cold. “We had some good times there too, though, didn’t we?”

 

He’d been amazed that La Cour had agreed to join him in buying the summer house in the first place, and that Mille hadn’t had more to say about it, but maybe La Cour wanted a holiday home as much as the next guy, despite his apparent inability to leave Copenhagen without twitching, and probably Mille’s longing for clear horizons meant anyone with the money to make that happen was good news.

 

In truth, Allan had taken out a loan for his part of the purchase that he hadn’t yet paid off, and selling was about the most sensible thing to do, even if he hadn’t scared his wife and son and ruined his career, not to mention the colour of the floor, beating up a would-be attacker in the living room.

 

Before that, there had indeed been memories he was sad to have corrupted with the regret of what had come after. Some of the best nights he and Mille had had since their marriage had happened there. And days out at the water edge with Victor, pointing with delight at every new wave and bird and piece of driftwood. Long walks with La Cour, not saying much, not doing much, but every now and again getting a mote of wisdom, a crack of light into that slowly, slowly uncurling mystery of Thomas La Cour that sometimes seemed like the biggest case Allan had ever assigned himself.

 

“All good things come to an end,” La Cour said now, sternly, and then cracked up laughing again. He was so very weird, and yet Allan couldn’t help laughing with him. He felt better now, after a two-minute conversation, than he had all week.

 

He wondered, briefly, what it was like for La Cour right now, being on the team alone. Well, not literally alone, that would be a contradiction in terms, but… well, Ingrid wasn’t quite used to La Cour yet, and the others couldn’t necessarily be relied on to make sure he had what he needed.

 

“You’ll be back with us soon, I’m sure.” La Cour said, and cleared his throat. “Bye Fischer.”

 

“Bye.”

 

Setting his shoulders straight, Allan got out of his car into the blistering wind and went to see a kid about a cowshed.

 

-

 

**2001.**

 

“What’s your problem with my hair?” Allan curled his hands over his head protectively, eyes wide.

 

La Cour giggled, grinning. “Nothing. If you like looking old fashioned, then of course, it's absolutely fine.”

 

Allan grinned, and flicked a spitball of paper at him, and then sat back in his chair, looked around the mobile office, and sighed happily.

 

La Cour coming back didn’t return everything to normal, but it bloody well helped.

 

Allan wasn’t quite sure when his life had started falling apart. _When you decided to sleep with Ida_ , he was pretty sure La Cour would say, and maybe that wouldn’t be wrong, maybe most people would say what he’d had with Mille had been too good to break apart, but Ida had just been one link in a lot of things that had fallen inextricably together like that theory with weather systems and butterfly wings: his formal warning for the fight, the denial of the FBI course, Mille spending more and more time at work… It was a net too dense for Allan to untangle, and yet so light he'd never seen it till he was caught. Now every move just seemed to strangle him yet more tightly. 

 

And then La Cour, La Cour who was supposed to be a fixed mark in all of the chaos, who Allan would have gamely gambled would never change in a decade, had turned up an old girlfriend, a secret past, a lost child and a kind of mental breakdown that had nearly got him arrested for murder.

  
And then La Cour had gone away.

 

Five whole months, La Cour had been on rest leave in Horsens, and he’d never called – maybe he’d been busy getting reacquainted with Helene, whatever – and somehow Allan hadn’t figured out how to call either, to the point where the gap had got too long to break without being awkward.

 

This morning, knowing La Cour was rejoining them, Allan had smoked three cigarettes in a row and felt like he didn’t know what to do with his feet, and when he’d scampered into the office, joke ready, he’d been braced for it not to be the same.

 

But La Cour smiled, looked a bit odd, and then told him his hair had too much gel, and that was just about weird enough that it was all exactly how it should be.

 

Later, they went for a beer. Helene was still around, it seemed, and La Cour still wasn’t exactly an open book of information. He was thinking about spending more time with her in Holbaek, she didn’t want to move to Copenhagen.

 

“Can’t all be good memories, though, in that place, for you?” Allan said carefully. He was tracing patterns on his beer glass, crosses and circles. He felt like a swimmer in a pool where the depth isn’t clear, pointing toes and checking for the gradient – _am I on solid ground yet?_ La Cour’s departure had been so dramatic, so much had been going on, Allan wasn’t sure if all they'd said and done in those febrile days had really rearranged the boundaries of the possible between them or not.

 

La Cour shrugged, and clammed up, coughing once.

 

“You then, Fischer,” he said, after a moment. “Mille and Ida?”

 

“Mille and Ida,” Allan confirmed. He caught La Cour’s look. “You never liked Ida.”

 

“I always liked Mille,” La Cour countered.

 

“She asked after you, by the way. I meant to say. Mille, I mean. Hopes you’re feeling better.”

 

“Well, tell her thank you. And how’s Victor?”

 

“Great, yeah, as always.” Allan smiled, looking up, and then remembered something else he’d thought of in their time apart. “Hey, listen, I’m sorry, uh…” he shifted the glass around on the mat. “I’m sorry if when Victor was coming, if I said anything that was…” he shrugged. “I didn’t know. I thought you’d never had any kids.”

 

“That was what I intended you to think. I could have told you otherwise.”

 

Allan laughed, feeling the awkwardness he’d been afraid of. Thing was, it wasn’t new, not really. It had felt like this sometimes before, as well.

 

He wiped the whole side of his hand down the glass, rubbing all the patterns away at once. “Any more secrets I should know about?”

 

Silence. When he looked up, La Cour was staring back at him. Allan felt heat rising in his face, and took a drink quickly.

 

“You’ll have to choose, one day,” La Cour pointed out.

  
  
Allan licked his lip. “What?”

 

“Mille and Ida.” La Cour sat back suddenly, shook his shoulders, cracked his neck. “Anyway, this is meant to be a celebration isn’t it? And I have something for you to celebrate, I can tell you. I was so bored, so very bored in Horsens that I began following the Superliga.” He grinned proudly and waved his fisted hand in the air, making his voice like the muted roar of a crowd. “A.C. Horsens, rah rah rah.”

 

The tension left Allan’s body. “Ah, so that’s why they’ve started losing so badly then?”

 

La Cour beamed. Allan reached out and ruffled his long hair for a moment, laughing at the face he made under it.

 

“See?” he said, after. “That’s why I wear my gel - extremely expensive and fashionable, by the way.”

 

La Cour made another face at him, sticking out his tongue.

 

Allan roared, and smiled. La Cour didn’t touch his hair again, though. Allan thought to himself that he might just take him at his word and shave it all off, and then see what kind of expression he'd have, touching that.

 

-

 

**2002.**

 

“Did you figure out what you want yet?” Allan sat back on the sofa, cradling his cup of coffee.

 

 _You know where the stuff is if you want one too_ , he’d told La Cour when La Cour had arrived at what was still, technically La Cour’s flat. _Well, I used to,_ La Cour had shot back, not with any malice, looking the place up and down with a low whistle.

 

So Allan hadn’t hoovered in a while, so what? And keeping clothes on the floor was something cool now, _floordrobe_ or something. 

 

One thing was for sure, now that Ida and Ida’s Father’s money were out of the picture, Allan was going to need to move out or find a miracle, because he couldn’t afford to buy the place any more, and La Cour certainly needed the money with baby Marie to sort out, and all that driving to and from Holbaek.

 

Perhaps La Cour was going to move there, permanently. Retire into the country again, live the bucolic idyll. Allan couldn’t blame him if so. La Cour had seen enough, done enough, to make most men want to take a step back from police work.

 

Now, La Cour was looking openly around the room, still frowning.

 

“I thought that plaster swan thing was Ida’s?”

 

“It was.” Allan frowned. “Certainly wasn’t my idea.”

 

“She didn’t take it?”

 

“I don’t know – who ever knows, with women? Maybe she’s planning to pop back and remember she forgot it.”

 

Sharp eyes turning on him. “Do you want her to?”

 

Allan shrugged. “Break up sex can be the best. Maybe not in your case.” He coughed. “Not for more than that. I don’t know, I…” He sighed. “My ex-wife has the lovely Mr. Henrik. Victor has Henrik. You have Helene and Marie. If I don’t have Ida, all I’ve got is a leftover plaster swan, don’t I?”

 

La Cour bit his lip. For a moment, Allan wondered what he was going to say next. Lots of things raced through his head, which was probably the fault of the coffee. He’d started drinking the supply that La Cour had left in the cupboards when he’d first moved in, and now he was hooked on the good stuff.

 

“I’ve been thinking,” La Cour said slowly, “about that bank job. Poor old Mrs Neilson.”

 

“Bloody hell, yes, that.” Allan put the cup down, ran a hand over his face. He needed to stop making cups of coffee, even if it felt like there was nothing else to do - his heart was racing out of his chest. “Still pisses me off we couldn’t land anybody for what that gang did to her.”

 

La Cour was looking up at him eagerly. “What if we could?”

 

-

 

The first step was to be discovered to have stolen impounded speed and sold it on to the bikers. For about a week between the transaction and the scheduled ‘exposure’, Allan tried to get his case files in order for whoever would be made to step into his shoes in the wake of his disgrace. This investigation might have become his priority number one, but there were several leads he wanted to make sure were followed in other matters. 

 

They’d been transferred to a central branch of homicide, him and La Cour both. “You make more sense together, don’t you?” Ulf had said casually, signing the paperwork, sighing heavily all the while. He was heading for retirement within the year, Allan reckoned, shattered by the demise of his pet project. Allan kind of wanted to take some petty satisfaction in that, happening to the man who’d first denied his own career dreams, but something about the task looming in front of him made very little else seem important.

 

When it was the day for La Cour to make the public discovery of his theft and officially denounce him in front of all the office, Allan felt a sick lump in his stomach. It was all on record in a secret file in a locked safe somewhere, if he wasn't killed he'd still have a job at the end, maybe even get a medal, but for now he was crashing and burning, all of it, every last thing he’d come into the force to do. Victor wouldn’t understand, or Mille or his parents. Ida would think she was well rid of him.

 

Only La Cour. He would only have La Cour, in all the world, to look at him and see who he was. 

 

That didn't feel like such a radical change, really. 

 

“I feel like Judas before Gethsemane,” La Cour confessed, coming over to him. They were sitting alone in the break room. It was nearly the end of the day, if they were going for it, it had to be soon. The plastic clock on the wall had a very loud tick.

 

“I’m Jesus then, am I?” Allan was smoking and for once La Cour wasn’t telling him not to. Now there was a nice side perk. Allan sighed ruefully, and stubbed it out anyway. He ought to get used to doing without. La Cour wouldn’t be able to visit him in prison, that would be too obvious, risk exposure. So probably nobody would visit at all, and where would he get his smokes from then?

 

“In your own way, sometimes,” La Cour told him, almost seriously, jumping off the table they’d both been sitting on, side by side.

 

Leaning in, he kissed Allan on the cheek, and then walked away.

 

-

 

**2003.**

 

“Might be good though, don’t you think? Me going out of the country for a while?” Allan tilted his head back and winced again as the bruises at the base of his skull met the hard walls of the corridor, and the partially healed and crusted cuts pulled at his skin.

 

La Cour said something about the adoption idea again – helping out Savannah's children, now that she couldn’t. Allan couldn’t really pay attention any more. He stared forwards; with his eyes puffed up he was half blind in the dim light. It was warm in the corridor – felt like he hadn’t been somewhere properly warm in years. That cell, drafty, stinky, and then on the road, the concrete floor where they’d kicked him, and all the other frozen hells he'd wandered in for weeks and months.

 

Right now La Cour was pressed up alongside him, solid and believable, safe, familiar. Allan wanted nothing so much as to relax, at long last, but if he did he might never get up again.

 

Maybe he shouldn’t. What was there to get up for?

 

He’d drifted asleep, he realised as he blinked awake, momentarily confused. La Cour was gently taking the cigarette from his mouth, a soft smile on his face.

 

Allan frowned, bit down on the fag end to keep it with him, and heard La Cour laughing.

  

For a moment he felt happy, simply and easily, and then it all crashed back onto him again.

 

Off to The Hague, that was right, that was where they were sending him; after all he’d given to the service, all he’d been through, after nearly fucking bleeding out in a garage in the middle of nowhere. Off to years - maybe years and years - of isolation and loneliness in a country where he didn’t speak the language or know anyone at all. No one in their right mind would call it a lateral career move, let alone anything better. And La Cour had just nodded, buttoned up, odd, and scarcely protested at all. 

 

Now that the truth about his situation was out, at least amongst Allan's immediate friends and family, someone else might write. If he paid for the flights, Mille might bring Victor down to see him, once or twice. Once, anyway.

 

He squinted, eyes heavy. He wondered if he could have La Cour’s gift for a moment, if he would be able to look back and see how he’d managed to get himself here, to this, after all his plans. If he would be able to look forward, and see anything coming next worth waiting around for. 

 

“Come on,” La Cour was saying to him. He reached down, helped Allan up, one arm under his, supporting. “You can’t get to another hotel in this state.”

 

“Your room, then? Why good sir,” Allan was too tired, too beaten up, too out of shits to hold back. “What will the mother of your child say?”

 

“None of her business. We broke up.” La Cour took them both a step forward. “Come on now, you need to sleep as soon as humanly possible, and not on a floor or in a chair for once.”

 

“When?” Allan dug his heels in. He wasn’t sure why it mattered; he wasn’t connecting things that fast right now. “When?”

 

“A year ago.”

 

“But… I thought… You never said anything.”

 

“It wasn’t germane to your situation.”

 

“It might have been,” Allan couldn’t stop himself saying.

 

La Cour was still holding him up, they were practically hugging. La Cour smelt of cedar again – he hadn’t, when Helene had been around; Allan should have noticed that changing.

 

“You wanted me out of that gang as fast as possible, you thought I was in too deep, that I didn’t care about anything else.” Allan lifted his hand, poked La Cour accusingly in the chest. “You told me off!" He took another breath, shuddering. "You should have told me that.”

 

A long silence. La Cour studying him, but Allan was used to that, well able to bear up under it.

 

“You’ve had a head injury,” La Cour informed him like it was news.

 

“Ten out of ten,” Allan said, and giggled. He was so tired. He needed coffee and a cigarette – no, he needed sleep, he could sleep, he could sleep now, it was finally allowed. No idea where he’d go or what he’d do, or anything at all, but La Cour was here, La Cour would sort him out. Maybe he’d known that from the start as well, from right back there at the very beginning, all those years ago.

 

“Come on,” La Cour was saying again – Allan realised he’d been sagging into sleep even standing up, collapsing into La Cour all over again.

 

He let himself be lead the few steps to the door, and into what was presumably La Cour’s room. It was a big wide with a white candlewick counterpane and it looked like a sight from heaven.

 

“Did you do this at your fancy boarding school?” Allan mumbled. He was lying on his back, somehow, and La Cour was taking off his shoes and socks. “Or after? Did you ever undress a man before?”

 

“Go to sleep, Fischer.” La Cour stood up and away, looking down at him from above. Then he picked up the side of the bedspread and folded it over, carefully pulling it up under Allan’s chin. “And no smoking in bed if you wake up and get bored. I’d like to survive the night, and right now I have at least an outside chance.”

 

“You want me to leave though, don’t you?” Allan said, or thought he said, but it might have been in a dream. When he did wake up, La Cour was already gone, just a note to say breakfast had been paid for.

 

-

 

**2004.**

 

“See, this is why you need me, right?” Allan laughed, hugged La Cour again. They were standing in the arrivals lounge at Schiphol airport, Amsterdam. Only an hour and a half from Denmark to the Netherlands, but for too long it had felt to Allan like he was half a world away.

 

“You hadn’t even realised the World Cup was playing this summer, or am I wrong?” Allan continued, teasing. 

 

“I was looking forward to other aspects of this trip,” La Cour said calmly, holding his gaze.

 

Allan felt his skin heat. He had never quite been able to remember what he’d said, the last time they’d met in person. In the texts and emails since, La Cour had been forthright and efficient, friendly but not confessional - much, indeed, as he ever had been.

 

Not that Allan would have minded laundry lists, as long as it was from home. Mille sent the odd card, photos of Victor, usually from some family event. Ingrid emailed, although Allan felt she blamed him for Johnny, and therefore for Gaby. Gaby had sent a birth announcement, and he’d sent back a card and a small gift, but heard nothing more. To his surprise he’d heard quite a lot – boring, but lengthy, mostly fishing-related – from Ulf. Perhaps the product of a guilty conscience.

 

La Cour’s emails came at least weekly, at first conveying details of the successful prosecutions in the biker case, triumphant, vindicated. Then practical issues – he’d moved back into his flat, he wanted to know where on Earth the key for the water heater had been put, what paint had been used when the windowsills were redone, where his other shelving unit had got to.

 

The practicalities had run their course, and still the messages came. Films, books, philosophy, weather, politics, food. Those uniquely La Cour spins on every topic under the sun, which Allan couldn't help looking forward to finding in his inbox, which he'd re-run in his head through another dreary week around people who were fun enough, but not quite...  

 

Then La Cour had mentioned getting rid of his old coffeepot, and Allan had said – it was a text conversation, quick, he hadn’t really been thinking - _I loved that coffeepot, why not bring it to me, this place could use something jolly._

 

A few minutes later the reply had come: _OK. When?_

 

So now here they were, late June in the end by the time they’d both sorted out their leave and cover, and Allan was reminded of those other meetings and partings, of the way with La Cour somehow it was never strange, and always strange all together.

 

“If you come this way,” Allan said now, and started walking backwards, pointing. “There’s a train that leaves for The Hague regularly, and I thought we’d get that one.”

 

“Makes sense,” La Cour offered. Allan bit his lip. He wanted a cigarette, a coffee, anything to justify how his heart felt in his chest right now.

 

But he thought maybe La Cour was nervous too. And he’d always been a damn good detective.

 

They only had three days. It would be easy enough to waste it being careful, but where had that ever got him in all his years so far?

 

“Did you tell me everything in your emails?” he asked now, keeping walking but falling into step beside La Cour, who was going slightly slower with his case on wheels beside him.

 

“What kind of everything are we talking about?”

 

“Are you dating Helene again?”

 

La Cour smiled sharply, and ducked his head. “No. No, I’m not.”

 

“Are you dating any other women?”

 

“No.”

 

“Any other men?”

 

A quick laugh. “No!”

 

“Just like me then,” Allan grinned, kept striding. “Did you bring me my coffeepot?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Good.” Allan glanced at his watch. “Interrogation ended at 13.40 hours.”

 

“Idiot,” La Cour said, and gave him a shove. He was smiling from ear to ear.

 

For the first time in his life – he was prepared to wager the first time in the life of any human - Allan experienced an eagerness to arrive in The Hague. He stood on the platform at the airport tapping his foot, looking up and down the track, and La Cour laughed some more and started telling him about Victor’s most recent hockey match.

 

“Mille sends her love,” La Cour added.

 

“You always liked her.”

 

“She always put up with me.”

 

Allan hadn’t ever really thought about it from that point of view.

 

“Did you and she ever talk about me?”

 

To his surprise, La Cour rolled his eyes at him.

 

“Allan Fischer, why don’t you ask me the question you really want answered, for a change?”

 

The tracks were starting to click and rumble, the train approaching. Allan was aware of a sense of limited time, and imminent danger.

 

“Maybe I’m afraid of the answer?”

 

“Maybe you shouldn’t be.” La Cour bent over, and drew up the handle on his case again. “Come on,” he said briskly.

 

Their train had arrived.

 

-

 

Tuesday night was the last night La Cour was in the Netherlands. Denmark played Sweden in the Estádio do Bessa, and in the 89th minute secured the goal that would ensure qualification for the knockout stages.

 

“I’m not sure I’ll ever forgive you for kissing me for the first time during a football match,” La Cour murmured, when at length they drew apart.

 

“I don’t know, I’m very persuasive,” Allan managed to say, between panting breaths, and shifted a bit on the sofa cushions, getting them even closer.

 

Allan’s sofa was very modern and boring, like his whole apartment, he’d never done anything to try and personalise anything or mark it as his own.

 

He had some ideas now.

 

“Isn’t that what sport’s for? Raising the blood?” Allan leant in now, trembling, and kissed La Cour quickly again. His hands in La Cour’s hair were shaking. “Didn’t you tell me that once?”

 

Slowly, La Cour ran his hands up Allan’s arms, soothing, running through the spaces between tendons and knuckles. All the time he held Allan's gaze, staring into him like he could see his soul, and still didn’t mind looking longer.

 

“Ask me what you want to ask me,” La Cour said, and leant in again himself for a moment, lips warmer now, wet.

 

“La Cour,” Allan drew a deep, bolstering breath. He stopped, laughed a little at himself, but one look up sobered him again. Yes. This did matter. Saying it did matter.

 

“La Cour. Would you please go out with me?”

 

“Thomas.”

 

“Thomas?”

 

“Yes.” Thomas smiled like Allan had only ever seen him smile holding his newborn baby daughter. “Yes, and yes.” He drew Allan in, kissed him again, murmuring as their lips met and met again. “Yes, though how we’re going to manage when you’re stuck here for another…” He stopped then, and shook, and he wasn’t laughing.

 

“It’s not your fault.” Allan told him, as he had more than once before. Guilt had kept La Cour silent, when Allan had been exiled, that had come out between them a while ago. 

 

Between them both, guilt really had a lot to answer for. 

 

Now, Thomas blinked up at him. “I was afraid. Can you believe I came up with that plan, the whole undercover thing, because I was afraid? When the unit broke up, I was so afraid I’d let it slip, with you, how I felt. We were on the edge of it, and I still had Helene and Marie then, and I thought you had Ida, you said you were thinking about getting married, and I… What kind of man..?”

 

“We’re here now,” Allan told him, “that’s what matters.”

 

On the TV, on the pitch in Portugal, someone was playing an anthem, here, down Allan's street, another expatriate from who knew which country, but presumably happy with the night’s results, was letting off fireworks.

 

This was what winning felt like, Allan could quite agree.

 

“Allan,” Thomas said now, voice sad and full of longing, and caressed his face again, rumpling his hair right up. Allan wanted to purr. “Allan, dammit, I’ve got to catch the early flight in the morning.”

 

Allan looked at his watch. “Six hours, we’ve got, then. And I do have coffee.”

 

-

 

**2005.**

 

“Guess what?” Allan yelled, as soon as La Cour picked up the phone. “It’s been confirmed! Next year, skat, I’m coming back! I’ve got my job in homicide, I’ve got my plane tickets paid for, I’m going to be home in Denmark, I’m going to drink my own body weight in beer, I’m going to eat Brændende kærlighed until I burst wide open and then, Thomas, I am going to have you fuck me until I can’t walk.”

 

There was a moment’s silence.

 

“Apart from some of the anatomical challenges raised by your suggestion,” Thomas said then, and Allan could hear the smile in his voice even though he was sure he wasn’t showing it, “that all sounds entirely agreeable. Nonetheless, we’re going to need to continue this conversation at another time, because I’m in a meeting right now and I’m pretty sure… yes they’re nodding, they all heard all of that. Oh. Ingrid says hello.”

 

Allan snorted with laughter, and twirled himself round around to drop down onto his – now rather well-marked, if you moved the throws – Europol standard issue sofa.

 

“Broadcast it to all networks if you like,” he said now. “I’m so happy I don’t even care. It’s not every day you get given everything that you want in the world.”

 

“Are you still wanting to..?” Thomas cleared his throat. “I mean my offer of the apartment still stands, if…”

 

“Just you try and stop me moving in,” Allan told him, jabbing his finger in the air for emphasis even though Thomas couldn't see - although, given it was Thomas, maybe he almost could. “I mean, you tried to do that once already and failed, right? So…” He laughed again. “And then in the New Year we’re going to get somewhere new, you and me, somewhere brand new for just memories of us. Somewhere with bedrooms for Victor and Marie to come stay, and a garden so you can wander around looking pensive and with a net so I can score goals all day long until you find something even more exciting for me to do.”

 

Thomas’ laugh, the fond one, trickled down the phone. Allan wanted so much to kiss him in that moment. “And where is the money for all of this coming from?”

 

“Thomas, Thomas. My dearest darling Thomas,” Allan rolled onto his back to look at the ceiling that in three months he would never have to see again. “It’s all going to be quite fine. In fact it’s all going to be entirely wonderful.”

 

Again, Thomas’ chuckle, the warmth Allan couldn’t wait to be enveloped in once more. “I have a feeling you may be right, although I’m not sure I should tell you so. Any more pleased with yourself and you might really do yourself an injury. Before I can.”

 

“So we’re understood. Until I can’t walk?” Allan stage-whispered earnestly.

 

“Yes and yes, darling,” Thomas told him.

 

-

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
